The crew I ended up using on the first day looked like this:
Arcanists Crew - 50 - Scrap

Colette Du Bois -- 5 Pool

+Cabaret Choreography [2] (for Dove summoning)

+Practiced Production [1]

+Shell Game [1] (for the Surge trigger on Prompt)

Coryphee [7]

Coryphee [7]

Howard Langston [12] (Who I will continuously refer to as Miss Step, because I prefer that model)

+Imbued Protection [2]

Mechanical Rider [12]

Mobile Toolkit [3]

Amusingly, Imbued Protection is actually a mistake. For some reason, I thought the +1 DF upgrade was the one that could be discarded for Fast, so I was very confused when I tried to discard it, and the upgrade said something about preventing damage.

For the first game of the tournament, I’m playing against Victoria, who is conveniently playing the Viktorias. Going in to the tournament, my plan was to identify every model that could potentially threaten one of my constructs, so I look at her cards and go, “Alright, Bishop is a threat, he has to die first. Johan is a threat, he has to die first. Viktoria of Ash is a threat, she has to die first. Viktoria of Blood is a thre…. uh-oh.” Even worse, I find myself on an indoor terraclips board with a big raised area in the center that has exactly one entrance that can fit a 40mm or larger base. Thankfully, I won the flip to choose deployment sides, and choose the side that allows me to actually access the Turf War marker. Even more fortunately, the scheme pool includes Protect Territory, so I choose that to go along with the ubiquitous A Line in the Sand. After a humorous mishap where Colette is blocking the critical central entrance and I’m forced to use the Mechanical Rider to hit her to trigger Now You See Me... to get her out of the way, I manage to get Miss Step and both Coryphees on the Turf War marker while the Viktorias and friends move up the left side of the board dropping schemes.

So now the real game begins. I have control of the center, and I’m setting up my scheme marker bunker on the centerline so that I can score Line in the Sand and Protect Territory and I just wait for her to commit something. Bishop is the first to wander too close, so Miss Step Nimbles in and kills him (in one shot - Red Joker on the first damage flip is a good way to start the day) and then is pulled back to “safety”. Unfortunately, Vanessa pulls in Miss Step, and the Viktorias cut her down. Vanessa is now well within my threat range, so the Coryphees slaughter her and push away - giving her a point on Frame for Murder. Johan dies next because he was standing right behind Vanessa. The Viktorias then proceed to sit outside the door, and since the Coryphees can’t fit through our models just look angrily at each other for the next 2 turns - and I end up winning 10-8.

Amusingly, I actually considered dropping at 1-0 because, and I quote, “Look, I already had a game where my theoryfaux played out perfectly on the table - all I have to go from here is downhill.” Man, am I glad that I didn’t end up going through with that.

Round 2:

Next up, I get paired against a Pandora player (whose name I forget…. Sorry!) who’s using a very similar crew as mine (all the big heavies he can take - including Nekima, Teddy, Coppelius and Baby Kade), I assume in preparation for Reckoning. I choose A Line in the Sand, like always - and pair it with Spring the Trap, expecting Pandora to cross the center line eventually. We’re on the dreaded sewer table, but thankfully the doors and buildings are now wide enough to fit bases larger than 30mm. My crew is significantly faster than his, so I manage to claim the open central platform between all the buildings, and start setting up my Line in the Sand.

At this point, my opponent decides that he doesn’t want to just charge in and watch his stuff get slaughtered, so he sends Nekima flying way around the flank, and literally backs up into his deployment zone with everything else. I’m more than happy to just sit and wait and win 3-0, so I start summoning Metal Gamins and Mechanical Doves. By turn 4, he’s finally had enough, so Nekima runs in, and Miss Step and the Mech Rider both commit to killing her (but can’t do it in one round), and everyone else just charges the main platform. The Coryphee Duet dodges around Pandora and chooses to kill Baby Kade instead so that I can Spring the Trap on her. I get three points from Spring the Trap, and I unfortunately forget that Deliver a Message was an option, so Colette doesn’t run away fast enough, gets Paralyzed by a Horror Duel and then has a message delivered to her. I almost threw away a sure win, but at the last second I managed get a fourth scheme marker on the center line, and win 6-4 (with neither of us getting a single point from Reckoning….)

Round 3:

This one requires some setup. Two Adepticons ago, I was running Rasputina in my first-ever Malifaux tournament and I managed to pull off a 2-0 until I get to the finals in an Arcanist mirror match against someone else named Bret (and he even spells his name right!), where I proceed to get absolutely stomped (or, at least, that’s how I remember it - he claims it was closer than that). So, when I hear that I’m in for another Bret vs. Bret match, I’m already worried about my winning streak getting stopped again. Then I look at the table - and it’s this horrifying forest of doom that is at least 75% forest terrain - and nothing else. He declares Guild, and ends up taking Perdita/Francisco, and then a bunch of cheap, significant models (Austringers, Guild Hounds, Brutal Effigy and four Clockwork Traps). I’m confused by the Traps until he deploys them on 4 out of the 5 Squatter’s Rights markers - and my face falls even further when the Austringers Deliver Orders to the little scraps of metal, and they take over the Squatter’s Rights markers despite never being able to activate. Again, I get fortunate and I draw the Plant Explosives scheme in addition to, of course, A Line in the Sand.

This game starts with an extremely costly mistake. I send a Coryphee up to about 4~5” behind the centerline so that I can teleport the other one up and try to claim a Squatter’s Rights marker or two extremely early on. I then learn that Perdita can basically threaten the entire board, and is more than capable of killing a lone Coryphee, as she kills it in a forest with an AP to spare. I realize that there’s absolutely nothing I can do to kill a DF 9 Perdita, I’m again worried that I’m going to lose the game - but I decide to keep on trying anyways.

From this point on, I don’t even bother trying to kill Perdita, I just start feeding her models on the left side of the table (where most of our models are, and where I control 2 of the 5 markers), and she kills both Miss Step and the Mobile Toolkit by herself (as well as the remaining Coryphee that was trying to run away) - but I manage to stall her from reclaiming my Squatter’s Rights markers until Turn 4, at which point, the Mechanical Rider, and her bevy of summons (well, the ones who survived the hail of raptor fire from the Austringers) finally manage to kill all the Clockwork Traps and Guild Hounds (creating a hilariously high total of 11 scheme markers on the centerline, 4 of which went into scoring me full points on Plant Explosives, thanks to the Clockwork Traps never being able to move). On turn 5, it’s coming down to the wire, and Perdita is forced to run over and engage a Metal Gamin to keep him from claiming the Squatter’s Rights marker I need to win - but she has to use 2 AP to get there, and only gets to shoot him once, triggering his Hard to Kill, but not actually killing him. Colette then Prompts him out of melee, and he grabs the last marker and I win the game 8-6.

At this point, I’m really lucky that there’s only 3 games on the first day, because I am literally shaking with relief after winning a game against the player I feared most going into this tournament, especially since I made what I thought was a game-losing mistake ten minutes into the first turn.

Anyways, the first day is over, and since I’m sitting at 3-0, I spend the whole night picking out schemes and strategies for the next day (and, of course, pick up some delicious Italian Beef at Portillo’s since I was back in Illinois). I’m really worried about day 2, because I have to play through Reconnoiter and Stake a Claim, neither of which my crew is really prepared to handle, and worse yet, the round 5 scheme pool is the worst I can think of: Breakthrough, Assassinate, Deliver a Message, and Cursed Object. I’m comforted by the fact that if I somehow manage to sneak my way through those two games, I get to win the finals in a hilariously favorable Turf War/A Line in the Sand/Protect Territory game (like in Round 1)

I was really worried about Reconnoiter and Stake a Claim, so I decided to drop the Mobile Toolkit, Imbued Protection and the remainder of my extra cache in order to get Angelica and Arcane Reservoir - reasoning that I needed more significant models to compete on table quarters, as well as getting some extra mobility for Stake a Claim.

Here was my crew for the second day:
Arcanists Crew - 50 - Scrap

Colette Du Bois -- 2 Pool

+Arcane Reservoir [2]

+Cabaret Choreography [2] (for Dove summoning)

+Shell Game [1] (for the Surge trigger on Prompt)

Angelica [6]

+Practiced Production [1]

Coryphee [7]

Coryphee [7]

Howard Langston [12] (Who I will continuously refer to as Miss Step, because I prefer that model)

Mechanical Rider [12]

Round 4:

So, starting fresh on the second day of the Masters, I eventually get paired with (another person whose name I can’t remember, but who goes by Valhallan42nd on this forum - and had this amazing quote about our game:

I played the Colette player, and let me assure you, mech rider made my Kirai cry that much harder. My list was not ideal to deal with Colette, but mech rider summoned from turn 3 onward and dropped scheme markers like they were 30mm confetti.

Fighting that crew was like trying to nail down jello.

)

Anyways, I somehow get placed back onto the forest table of doom - and my opponent drops Kirai with as many significant models as possible. It was at this point that I realized that I had completely forgotten that the Mechanical Rider had the Unimpeded rule, and therefore didn’t have to spend nearly as many walk actions as I did last game. Oops. We both announce Power Ritual (which is pretty easy on Flank deployment, and especially easy for Crooked Men to score), and I also choose Protect Territory, but don’t reveal it. And yes, this is the first and last time this tournament where I didn’t pick A Line in the Sand.

I end up splitting my forces - sending the Mechanical Rider and Miss Step to the top-left corner, and both my Coryphees to the bottom-right, leaving Colette and Angelica in my deployment zone, just over 6” from the center and in a scheme marker bunker. I actually forgot to leave a scheme marker in my deployment zone’s corner, so I have to send a summoned Dove back there, and use Practiced Productions to summon a scheme marker back there. Kirai and most of her heavy hitters move to the bottom-right corner to hunt the Coryphees that manage to stop him from laying down a scheme marker, and are apparently trying to claim the Power Ritual on their own. But this is all a smoke screen - as soon as I looked at Kirai’s cards, my entire plan for the game changed to “Let’s see if I can win this game without making an attack” - since I have absolutely zero desire to let him summon an Ikiryo at any point. So the Coryphees keep dancing away, only attacking if there isn’t a Lost Love or Kirai nearby (which, to his credit, is almost never).

On turn 2, I fail to stop the Crooked Man from dropping a scheme marker off in the top left corner, but I drop off a Metal Gamin to clear it up eventually. He summons a Hanged, and the Coryphees just run away continuously. I manage to claim both left-hand table quarters, and he claims the right-hand ones, so we both score. On turn 3, I get the scheme markers I need for Power Ritual, and clear his in the top-left corner. I manage to clear out the top-left corner, and score it with just a single Metal Gamin, and I actually manage to take control of the top-right and bottom-left corner, since most of his crew had committed too far to the bottom-right on the previous turn. On Turn 4, I actually use Angelica’s Hooked Cane to push two of his significant models into the center of the board, thereby preventing him from stealing either of the left-hand corners, but we both score that turn - while his Hanged deals half of Angelica’s HP and he summons another scary spirit. In the meantime, the Mech Rider has moved all the way to the top-right corner, and begins punching everything that doesn’t summon an Ikiryo when hit, and spawning 5 or so scheme markers around it. We don’t manage to get all the way through turn 5, but I manage to take control of three of the table quarters again, and I remove one of the scheme markers he puts into my deployment zone - so when time is called, he doesn’t score all of Breakthrough and I’m another point up on Reconnoiter - and I win the game 10-6 without ever making an attack that could possibly summon Ikiryo.

Round 5:

About halfway through this round, the TO’s decide that staying up all night the night before to run the story encounter is not the best way to remain sane through the last 8 hours of Malifaux that weekend, so they end up canceling round 6. In what eventually becomes my last round of the Adepticon Masters, I get paired against Mike (oldmanmyke on these forums), who ended up taking third place overall. He’s playing Collodi (with Vasilia, a Stitched Together, a Pair of Effigies, and a bunch of unidentifiable dolls) on Stake a Claim, so I panic and drop my original plan of taking Breakthrough (reasoning that I won’t be able to sneak past the wall of dolls) and end up taking Cursed Object instead - to go with A Line in the Sand, like always. This board is actually a reasonably open Wild West-themed board.

The game begins with most of his puppets running to just on the far side of the centerline - so Miss Step Nimbles up and charges the Stitched Together (mostly because I still live in fear of how powerful it was in M1E). Angelica then uses Give Them an Encore to pull Miss Step back to “safety.” This ends up backfiring horribly, when I realize that she is now within 2” of Angelica - so at the beginning of turn 2, Collodi and Vasilia together force Miss Step to attack Angelica at least 4 times. After burning through all of my cards, protecting her, only one attack manages to get through - leaving Angelica with 1 HP. Miss Step then gets out of friendly fire range of Angelica and kills a random puppet. The Coryphees duet up and assassinate the Arcane Effigy. The Mech Rider runs way past the centerline and summons a Gamin on the far-right side of the table. Unfortunately, he manages to out-activate me and sneak a Marionette past my lines and scores the first Stake a Claim point - as well as getting Cursed Object on both Miss Step and the Coryphees. He’s now up two points, and things are starting to look a little grim.

Things look even grimmer when he activates Collodi and manages to slow each of my 12+ soulstone models. Fortunately, the Coryphee Duet is swift, so it uses it’s entire activation to Stake a Claim, and the Gamin that was summoned last turn Stakes another (and then uses Magnetism to start murdering dolls as a 0 action). Miss Step Nimbles up to the Marionette on my side of the table, and gives it a Cursed Object. Vasilia then charges up and finishes off Angelica, removing Practiced Production from the game - and then Colette kills her with a single Sabre Trick. The Mech Rider summons another Gamin, and uses it’s 1 AP to shoot a puppet and create 2 scheme markers on the centerline. So now I score a point on Stake a Claim, and another on Cursed Object. By the end of the next turn, Only Collodi and the Marionette I’m keeping alive for Cursed Object are left - so I end up winning 9-4, and going 5-0-0 overall.

All in all, my crew performed WAY better than expected, and each and every one of my opponents was extremely kind and gracious - and both of the opponents I played against that I went into the tournament fearing complimented my play. To say that I couldn’t be happier with my performance is a bit of an understatement.

Thanks for sticking with me through this and my previous posts - I hoped you learned something about a new and interesting way to play Colette - and please feel free to ask if you have any questions about this crew, I love talking about Colette.

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That was a crazy board we played on! I regret not playing more aggressively, but I felt like it was impossible (from past experience) to try and deny Colette from line in the sand and protect territory, so I was just trying to get as many points as I could with having pretty much half the board cut off from me. Congrats on doing so well throughout the tournament!

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Critical feels like a bit of strong word to me. Let me go through it game by game and see if I can back up that feeling.

Game 1: While it did drop scheme markers on the centerline (and for Protect Territory), I would have almost certainly gotten the same effect from just Practiced Productions since I never lost control of the center

Game 2: The Mechanical Rider did nothing scheme-wise (in fact, most of what it did was make it possible for my opponent to score reckoning points). I scored A Line in the Sand and Spring a Trap off of normal Interact actions and Practiced Productions

Game 3: The Mech Rider single-handedly won me the game here, no question of that - but that's kind of unavoidable when it's your only non-master model that survived the game. That being said, the Mech Rider/Line in the Sand combo is EXTREMELY powerful on Squatter's Rights - since your opponent has to get to the center of the board to claim the Squatter's Rights markers, so you're guaranteed to have a scheme marker producing enemy model near the centerline at basically all times. This is only exacerbated if you have the Plant Explosives scheme like I did.

Game 4: I didn't actually take Line in the Sand here - but the Mech Rider scored me an extra point on Protect Territory (and Miss Step did literally nothing that game).

Game 5: I had killed all but three of my opponent's models by turn 4, so there wasn't really anything stopping me from A Line in the Sand (although the Mech Rider did drop some on the centerline). I suppose a summoned Gamin did score me an extra point on Stake a Claim turn 3.

Wow, even considering how subjective I am when answering that question (since every time I answer that the Mech Rider was critical, I'm adding fuel to the OP fire), that seems like an incredibly low number. She only scored A Line in the Sand 1/5 games by herself, and she helped score it 2/5 games.

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I don't feel mech is op. I think she hasn't been seen by everyone and you had strong utilization of it. I think its more people not having seen one and less about it being op. All that said I'm quite keen to see if jousting is an effective counter measure

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I think it did help fairly well with the line in the sand in our game, but only because of our crazy, crazy board. Being able to drop the two down without having to follow the four inch rule certainly helped when we had that big gaping circle we couldn't put markers in. But it only laid down two scheme markers for your line in the sand... in a normal game on a more accessible board that is nothing for a Colette crew!

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Very interesting report and crew. I am tempted to try this, although I might swap out Miss Step for Lazarus for a game to see how he does with positives on damage with that big gun of his. He could assimilate the Dance Together from a Coryphee to get himself in range on Turn 1 for a (0) Action, Rapid Fire and then be Prompted to fire another three times by Colette. Not to mention discarding Imbued Energies to gain Fast.